The future is not written in stone
by theshypen
Summary: Save the cheerleader, save the world! A slightly different take on the Homecoming episode... Focuses on action rather than relations.
1. Homecoming I

_**Author's note: **Okej, this is my very first fic. It will grow into a Heroes universe different from the series. But with familiar events and characters. _

_Also, I'm not a native english-speaker, so you don't need to tell me that I suck at writing in this language. But if you think I'm relatively good at it, tell me. It would encourage me :)_

_ **Disclaimer: **I don't own anything that's got to do with the NBC Heroes show._

* * *

**1**

**Homecoming I  
**

The sky was dark when Peter Petrelli stepped out of the taxi. He slammed the door shut and took a look around the street when the car drove away. His eyes immediately spotted what he was looking for.

He swiftly walked up to the short man standing outside the café nearby, and grabbed his shoulder. The man spinned around and faced him with a slightly confused, Asian face. But then something suddenly seemed to strike them at the same time.

"Are you Hiro Nakamura?" Peter quickly asked, just so he hadn't grabbed the wrong shoulder.

"No," answered the Asian, but continued, "I am his friend, Ando! And you, you are Peter Petrelli! Hiro... He isn't here right now." The face that just had gone happy, went gloomy and pondering again.

"Well, he'd better show up then." Peter said and shot another glance around the street. "It's happening soon."

At those words, Ando noticed that the other man was clutching something in his hand. "Mr Petrelli, what is that?"

"Oh..." Peter said, and handed Ando the picture that Simone had taken, before Nathan destroyed Isaac's dreadful painting. Ando gasped and raised his eyebrows in shock when he saw the border on the wall saying 'Homecoming' clearly, the clock next to it showing 8:12, and the mis-shaped body below it.

"Oh, my God! Is that... Is that you?"

"Seems like it. Anyhow, here's the name of the school, and this shows when it happens." Peter almost shrugged his shoulders, poking at the picture.

Ando waved his arms helplessly. "But... Hiro is not here! He has gone to the past, to save a girl!"

Peter took a deep breath. "But we're here now, to save another girl, because she can save the world! If Hiro wont help, we'll do it on our own."

He turned to the street again, and waved for another taxi. Ando didn't move.

"You coming?" Peter said when he noticed.

Ando twitched, and wrinkled his forehead. "No," he said after a moment. "I will stay and wait for Hiro. I believe he will come back. Besides... Without him, I am not really... Anything at all." He looked down.

"I'll tell you, without anyone else, I'm not really anything at all eighter." said Peter and gave Hiro's trustworthy friend a faint smile. "But I guess I'll have to save the cheerleader on my own, then. It's my destiny, I suppose. I've got... About an hour."

Ando glared at his own watch. Then at the picture in his hand. "But..." he said. "You die!"

Peter Petrelli looked at the Asian man. He took the picture from him, and glanced at it again. As a cab pulled over, he folded it in his pocket.

"Yeah," he said, and walked over to the waiting cab.

* * *

In a room on the second floor of a house in Odessa, Texas, sat a girl by herself on her bed. She had never felt so angry or dissapointed in her whole life. She wasn't allowed to go to the homecoming game? Just for giving a black eye to a girl more evil than the Devil himself? 

She jumped high when she heard a knocking on the window. A boy waved happily at her from outside. She hastily opened the window and let him in.

"Zach? What in the world are you doing here?" she managed to say in her surpriseness. "Aren't you going to the homecoming?"

"Of course I am," he said with a wide smile. "But the more important thing is that you will. I came to rescue you from your mean father! Get moving already!"

* * *

_Please leave some form of comment. How's my style of writing? _


	2. Homecoming II

_**Auth: **I don't know how far this will stretch, but I have some things in mind that will make this different from the series. I'm trying hard to make the characters natural, I think that's the hardest thing. Please review, at least a quick note about the language or the characters!_

* * *

**2**

** Homecoming II**

Peter once again stepped out of a taxi and looked around. The evening was completely black by now. He could hear sounds from a distant crowd somewhere. In front of him was the school. A big border hung above the entrance. _Homecoming_, it read.

He flinched, and pulled the folded picture out of his pocket. Yes, this was it. This was the exact spot where he was going to...

The clock above the entrance showed 7:50. According to Isaac's painting, he, Peter, was going to die, or at least hurt himself horribly, in less than twenty minutes... But there was no point fighting it. He no longer cared if Nathan believed him or not. It was his destiny to save the cheerleader. Or die trying.

A chilly breeze made his black fringe sway. Despite the confusing life he had walked into lately, it felt good knowing he did the right thing. For he was, for the first time in a very long time, completely convinced that he was.

He swallowed, put on a determined face, and walked towards the school.

* * *

The blonde girl hurried through the corridor to get to the changing rooms on time. She was happy. Happy that she actually ran away from home, against her fathers words. But of course she felt guilty all the same. Her father always cared for her and wanted what was best for her. But tonight, she simply didn't deserve sitting at home when Jackie and everybody else had the time of their high school lives at the homecoming game. 

She turned swiftly around a corner, but suddenly ran into something. The something reacted. It was a man!

"Sorry!" the girl said, and hesitated for a moment.

The man didn't say anything. He just froze, and seemed to stiffly eye her up and down, though his face wasn't really visible underneath the high collar. A chill went through the girl's body, but she shot him a bright smile anyway, and continued her race through the corridor.

_What a creepy guy!_ she couldn't help thinking.

The man pulled his cap lower on his forehead, and turned back to look into the glass monter on the wall. Another bright smile shone towards him from several photos. _Jackie Wilcox_, he read on the frames.

* * *

Mr Bennet knocked on his daughter's bedroom door. When she didn't reply, he opened it up. 

Three seconds later, he'd dashed down the stairs and reached his wife, who was sitting comfortably in the living room sofa, petting her adored dog.

"Where's Claire?" he asked wildly.

"Oh, I guess she's out at the homecoming game by now," Mrs Bennet simply answered.

"What?!"

"Well, I saw her and Zachary skip across the front lawn some while ago, so I just figure."

Mr Bennet was greatly taken aback by this. "Wha... Why didn't you stop her?"

Claire's mother turned around in the sofa and let go of Mr Muggles the dog. "Because she doesn't deserve this, Noah! You're being too harsh! This night is what she has been waiting for, dreaming about for so long. You can't deny her this just because she knocked out a girl, who actually deserved it!"

Mr Bennet stumbled backwards, terror growing inside him. "You don't know what you've done," he told Mrs Bennet, and dashed out of the house with only one thought on his mind. Nothing else mattered anymore. No one else.

* * *

"Jackie! Come on, it's time!" 

The cheerleading girls giggled and finally closed their lockers. The changing rooms were filled with excitement. This was the night they had waited for, practised for! "Jackie, what are you doing?" somebody hollowed again.

Jackie stuck her head out from behind another row of lockers. "You go on without me, I'll be there in a minute!" she shouted back with a plastic smile.

The girls giggled even more, and left the room in a crowd.

Jackie turned back to the girl in front of her, who had just finished putting on her cheerleading suit, and now stood up facing her with a nonchalant look on her face.

"Claire," Jackie said coldly. "Somebody told us you'd been grounded."

"It didn't take," the blonde girl replied.

"How lucky you got here in time, then!" Jackie said sarcastically. "'Cause we really wouldn't make it without our own oddball!"

"Funny, you'd think it'd be enough having a _hero _on the team," Claire said, still nonchalant, tending to her un-knitted shoelaces. "How's you bruise?"

Jackie was about to give a very fierce reply to that, but instead she pulled up a pocket mirror from an invisible pocket on her suit, and looked angrily at her own reflection once more.

"Nothing I can't cover up," she said through clenched jaws. "And at least, I'm a hero!" she added. "You, you're nothing anymore! The only one you've got is that gay boyfriend of yours, and what is he to have, huh?"

Claire finished knitting her laces, and stood up again. "You're not the hero, Jackie," she said, eyes narrowing.

"Yes, I am!" Jackie's face turned redder as she backed away from Claire, ready to storm away at the instant her ex-best friend uttered some comment to which she couldn't give a well poisoned reply. "I am the cheerleader who saved a man from burning up, and everybody in town loves me! I am the hero!"

At her last words, everything turned dark. The lights had suddenly gone out. A mysterious chill went through Claire's body again.

"Jackie?" she said.

The reply she got was a nearby scream, that twisted her insides and made her heart stop beating.

* * *

_And you think you know what's coming... Well, maybe you do. But maybe not... No you don't. Shall I continue? _


	3. Homecoming III

**3**

**Homecoming III  
**

Noah Bennet was standing alone in a corridor of the school, when the horrifying shriek reached him. His world suddenly seemed to fall apart.

"Claire!" he called out, and darted off in the direction of the screaming. _No! I can't be too late!_

He found the girls' changing room. The lights were out. What was going on? Was Sylar here?

And then he saw the girl. A lifeless body, stained with blood. She faced the floor, and her blonde hair was magnificently spread out like a fan, around her once so beautiful and innocent head.

Noah stumbled on his own feet, and crouched beside her, his face in tears.

* * *

Peter Petrelli heard the scream as well. He was in another corridor. He cursed the all too large school and ran towards the sound. 

In the middle of a hallway, a blonde girl came rushing out from a doorway. She let out a scream and tossed herself at Peter. "Help me! Help!"

"Calm down!" Peter said and grabbed her shoulders. Then he noticed her cheerleader dressing.

"Are you a cheerleader?" he immediately asked.

"Please, help me! He's coming! He's going to kill me too!" The girl was out of her mind.

Before Peter could ask 'who?', a man in dark clothes also came out of the door. In some strange way, Peter suddenly thought, the man seemed to drain the surroundings of light and hope. He stopped dead, and pointed a large hand at them. The cheerleader shrieked.

"Run!" peter told her, and pushed her to make her go the other way. He stationed himself broad-legged in the middle of the hall. He had to save this cheerleader. It was his destiny. He would save New York, and everybody he knew. He would save the world. The hands of a clock on the wall shifted majestically before him. Eight minutes.

The man in the cap raised his hand. At once, three locker doors were tugged away from their places, and raised ghostly in the air. Peter's jaw dropped. But he realized he shouldn't be surprised. After all, he had a brother who could fly, and he knew a japanese who traveled through time.

But he wasn't prepared for what happened next. The locker doors shot off in his direction, and he had to jump aside and shield himself with his arms to avoid getting throwed off his feet. When he stood up straight again, the dark man was all of a sudden standing right beside him. Peter made an effort to back away, but with the flick of a finger, the man sent Peter flying backwards into the wall.

Peter fell to the floor, and grunted from pain. As he looked up a few moments later, Sylar was gone. He'd gone after the cheerleader!

As to state his worst fears, a new scream reached him. He made a great effort and pulled himself from the floor.

When he'd run around the next corner, he saw his nightmare becoming real. He stopped dead.

The cheerleader lay on the floor on her back. Peter had to cling to the wall in order to stand up. It wasn't due to his injuries. But the sight in front of him...

Her forehead was chopped off. That was it. Her brain were gone, but the blood still flooded freshly, and Peter couldn't believe it. He wanted to vomit. He'd failed. Sylar had killed a cheerleader.

* * *

Sylar tried to find his way back out of the dull school. He had to get out of here. He had to test his newly aquired ability, but not here. 

He reached a doorway, and stepped out of it. It lead him to the schools outdoor amphitheatre. As he started walking upwards the benches, a voice made him stop.

"Come back!" the voice bellowed. Sylar slowly turned around.

"You will pay for what you've done to my daughter!" Noah said, and pointed a gun at the other man.

_How does he know I've done anything?_ Sylar thought for a moment, without moving an inch. Then he noticed the drops of blood he'd left in his path. Blood that hadn't belonged to him. He nodded and smiled for himself.

Noah took the smile as an offending gesture, and fired the gun, heavily grimacing. The bullets stopped merely an inch from Sylar's chest. They lingered in mid-air for a split second, then they were gone. Noah took a step backwards, and fell on his back. Red stains of warm blood flooded the front of his shirt.

He couldn't believe it.

* * *

_Don't slap me. It'll get better._


	4. Homecoming IV

**4**

**Homecoming IV  
**

Claire stepped out on the concrete ground. The air was even more chilly now, but she didn't feel it. All of a sudden, the only thing she felt was emptiness. She had caught sight of the body.

She didn't understand how, but on the ground in front of her, in the middle of the amphitheatre, lay the man she cared for more than anyone else in the world. Her father coughed up a bubble of blood. He was alive?

Speechless, she crouched beside him and put a hand on his faint cheek.

"Claire?" he breathed. She sobbed. "Claire! You're... Alive! How can that be? I... Saw you..."

"Dad, what happened? Why did you come?" Claire cried. She felt so confused.

The man... The man in the cap had grabbed Jackie in the changing rooms, but Claire had lunged herself at him without a second thought, and forced him to let go of her. Jackie ran, but Claire couldn't. He had hurt her. She wondered for a second if Jackie was all right.

"Dad, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have run away, it's all my fault..." Her words were barely audiable through her sobbing. But Noah heard her.

"It doesn't matter... Doesn't... You're all right, and that's..."

"Dad?"

He fell silent, his gaze focused on something behind Claire. She spun around, and saw the man. He was still there, standing on the highest row of benches.

He seemed surprised to see her. She quickly understood why. Just like her father, this man had thought she was dead. And now she sat here in front of them, without a single scratch.

She crawled backwards in terror, reluctantly further away from her father. Sylar raised his hand once more, determined to correct his mistake of killing the wrong cheerleader. This was obviously the one he intended to take in the first place.

* * *

Peter couldn't find his way out of the building. He hated the way it was built. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered anymore. The cheerleader was dead, and according to the Hiro Nakamura he had met, this was the only thing that couldn't be allowed to happen. The only goal he had set up in life, he had missed. The world would fall. The bomb would go off. And it was his fault. All incompetent Peter's fault. 

He reached a great door. He could see people outside it. People?

Without hesitation, he went outside and met an astonishing view.

* * *

Noah Bennet roared at Sylar, coughing up more blood doing this. Claire screamed, and closed her eyes. Next thing she knew, she felt something slip by her, and she just had to open her eyes again. A new man took place between her father and the dark man. His coat fluttered as he came to a halt. She stared at the back of his dark-haired head, and didn't even dare to breathe.

* * *

Peter wasn't afraid any more. Suddenly, it was all obvious to him. The cheerleader was here. Sylar was here. This was it. It was time to save the world. He no longer needed a watch to realize that. 

He closed his fists and dashed forward, straight towards Sylar. The murderer wasn't prepared for the impact, and tumbled backwards when Peter thrusted himself at him. They both fell backwards, over the edge...

* * *

Claire gasped loudly, still sitting on the ground. That was all her body could do. The two men had gone out of sight. Her father coughed and moaned. The hands of a clock somewhere beneath them moved. They read 8:12. 

"Dad..." she wispered.

"Claire, call an ambulance," Noah ordered faintly. "And... Don't go downstairs... Don't look..."

But he couldn't summon the power to speak further. Instead, he went into a fainting state.

Claire sat still for a second. Then she took her father's cellphone from his pocket and made the call. But she didn't stay with him. She ran when she talked. She ran towards the stairwell.


	5. Homecoming V

**_Auth:_**_ Okej, I'm sorry for making this chapter so horribly short, but it felt right. _

_Also, I would die to get a couple of reviews. Small, tiny, short ones, at least..._

* * *

**5**

**Homecoming V **

A lonely body lay on the ground. Moments before, it had been full of life, of hope, but also of determination. That determination led the man to his destiny. A large pool of red slowly formed around his head.

Claire came out of the doors, for the second time this evening seeing a nightmare before her, doing so.

The man who had saved her life didn't move. He had met death in the fall. And the villain was nowhere to be seen. Claire had just brushed away her tears, but now they flooded up again. She slowly stepped closer to the body.

Why? Why did her savior have to die?

A sudden coughing sound made her skip. Her head spun around to find somebody, perhaps the man who had shot her father? But... it came from the body in front of her.

* * *

Peter opened his eyes and gasped for air. 

He could see. He could breathe. But they had jumped... His brain tried to catch on, all too fast.

He slowly rose, supporting himself with his elbows. He twitched his head, and looked down on his body. Something wasn't right. He almost passed out as he saw it. His whole lower body was turned around the wrong way.

Scared, he quickly grabbed his legs, and grimaced as he pulled his own hips into place. Strangely enough, the pain went away almost instantly.

He breathed heavily, and shook his head in amazement. Then he noticed the girl standing before him. The cheerleader.

She came closer, an almost blaming look on her beautiful face. But this cheerleader was alive and well. Her whole head was in the right place. He had saved her, at least.

"You're... like me," she said quietly, and didn't let him go with her eyes. "You can do what I can do!"

Peter didn't listen. He had just realized that the murderer wasn't there.

"Where is he?" he said wildly. "Where has he gone?"

"That man? I don't know, he isn't here!" Claire said shaklily. "I... I've called for an ambulance."

"Call the police! Strange, I don't think I need an ambulance..."

He brought his hand to his cheek, and felt blood cover his fingers. But he couldn't find the wound that caused it.

"Oh my god, you _are_ like me!" Claire exclaimed as she saw what he was doing. "You're a freak too!"

She stopped, realizing she had just called her savior a _freak_. Suddenly though, Peter seemed to regain his senses enough to fully understand what she was saying.

"You're saying... You can do something?"

Claire nodded, and he grabbed her shoulder in excitement. This definately meant something.

"Are you the one, then?" he asked. "By saving you, did I save the world?"

Just then, a police squad came out if nowhere, storming the entrance to the school, and pulled Claire and Peter apart before they could say anything more.

* * *

Sylar stumbled into the forest. Finally, he was out of sight from the horrible school. 

His leg hurt badly, but otherwise, he was well. Not as well, of course, as he would have been if he had succeded with his attempt tonight. But at least he had managed to get away in time. He always got away. He was a survivor.

That man... The man in the coat. He would pay for this, eventually. And the cheerleader would too. She hadn't seen the last of him. He needed her power. With it, he would become truly invincible.

Sirens from police and ambulance cars reached his ears, as he limped deeper into the dark, shadowy forest.

* * *


End file.
